The conductor Donald Runnicles concluded his tenure with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on the last day of the 2016 Edinburgh International Festival with a performance of Schoenberg’s epic Gurre-Lieder at Usher Hall.

The gargantuan forces needed bring to mind the festival atmosphere Mahler’s Eighth Symphony also evokes. Here’s a sampling of the reviews:

And so this concert summed up the kind of playing that he and this orchestra have developed together – a rich glow at the heart of the strings and a capacity to turn on a dime and power up almighty sounds.

Runnicles is particularly well known for his interpretations of the core Austro-German Romantic repertoire, so Gurrelieder plays to his strengths. Under his baton Schoenberg’s ripe score yields up its influences. There is Wagner in the love music, of course, but also Bruckner in the solemnity of the Wood-Dove, Beethoven in the nature-painting and, of course, Mahler in the scale and structure. That scale could be pretty overpowering at times, and not just in the final, overwhelming greeting to the sun that ends the work. The sweep and surge of the love music was intoxicating, as was the wall of brass and percussion that accompanied the chorus’ romping as the hellish riders. What was most striking, however, was the way Runnicles repeatedly brought out the delicacy of the orchestration.

[Schoenberg’s] mega-cantata Gurrelieder, was the vehicle chosen to whisk us off on such a glorious journey, driven by the massively-inflated forces of the BBC Scottish Synphony Orchestra, a male-dominated Edinburgh Festival Chorus, five soloists and speaker, all under the towering leadership of maestro Donald Runnicles, and formulated by a musical language gathering up the scraps of Wagner, colouring them with whole-tone harmonic treats from Debussy, sweeping up Mahler in its tracks before opening the gates to teasers of the world-changing Schoenberg-to-come.

The Richard Wagner Museum is located just outside Lucerne in the Tribschen villa where the composer lived in the years just before settling in Bayreuth.

This summer’s special exhibition focuses on the little-known figure Franz Wilhelm Beidler (1901-1981). From the museum’s description:

Franz Wilhelm Beidler was the son of Isolde, the first daughter of Richard Wagner and Cosima, who was still married to Hans von Bülow at the time.
For 16 years Franz Wilhelm Beidler grew up in the knowledge that he was Richard Wagner’s first and only grandchild. The paternity suit filed by Isolde in 1914 in order to be recognised as Richard Wagner’s daughter culminated in a public fiasco and an insurmountable family dispute. Franz Wilhem Beidler dissociated himself from the Wagner family, moved to Berlin and married the Jewish woman Ellen Gottschalk in 1923.

Beidler supported the Socialist movements of the Weimar Republic and unequivocally rejected National Socialism. Subsequent to Hitler’s assumption of power, the Beidlers emigrated to Paris before being able to take up residence in Switzerland. In 1943 Beidler was elected general secretary of the Swiss Writers’ Association (SSV) and held the position for 29 years.

The Beidler family was ousted and suppressed by the Wagner dynasty for many years. Featured in the exhibition are the reasons, background information and course of events in the “Beidler Affair,” which included Richard Wagner’s personal involvement and is also closely connected with the history of the Bayreuth Festival. The exhibition also aims to rehabilitate and pay befitting tribute at long last to the Beidler family, whose descendants live in Switzerland.

I finally had my first chance to see the fabled Martha Argerich live at last night’s Lucerne Festival concert — the second of two concerts at the Summer Festival by Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Even in such a decided non-masterpiece as Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, she’s the real thing, one of the most magnetic musical personalities I’ve encountered.

As a generous encore, she and Barenboim sat together at the keyboard to play a Schubert’s piano duo: the Rondo in A major, D 951.

Swiss Radio and Television has now posted the opening concert of Riccardo Chailly’s debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

Chailly opened the 2016 Summer Festival on 12 August with a rousing performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony: the one work missing from the late Claudio Abbado’s otherwise complete Mahler cycle with his beloved LFO.

The broadcast also includes a 10-minute portrait of the conductor with interviews by way of a prelude.

Christian Wildhagen, an expert on the Eighth (he wrote a dissertation about the work), covered Chailly’s interpretation for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

Prom 32 this week featured Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Mahler 1, and Dutilleux’s The Shadows of Time (one of his last works). The concert is still accessible to hear online for a few more days here.

Meanwhile, Daniel Stephen Johnson reports on the Seattle Symphony’s latest addition to its acclaimed Dutilleux series under conductor Ludovic Morlot:

While the orchestral playing is as ravishing as listeners have come to expect from Morlot and Seattle, the soloists brought in from outside the band are among the very hottest players on their respective instruments. The playing of violinist Augustin Hadelich, fresh from his Grammy win for last year’s entry in this Dutilleux cycle, is as intensely expressive in Sur le même accord as it is precise, while harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani executes Les citations with his characteristic wit and panache, and the cimbalom playing of percussionist Chester Englander lends an unexpected delight to Mystère de l’instant.

And my own recent profile of Hadelich for Strings Magazine is available here. September’s Gramophone will have my story on the Seattle Symphony and Dutilleux.

Black Panther broke records and crushed expectations at the box office it. Not just here in the States, but in foreign markets too. That performance, as well as the one by Get Out, can finally put to rest the notion that movies with black actors don't do well internationally.